bleach bypass on colour reversal

[ben nelson]

i'm still really new to using film, so before i spent the money on the stock, i thought i'd see if anyone knew something about this.

 

i was reading the production notes on Buffalo '66, and vincent gallo said that he had to beg kodak to make the colour reversal stock for him? i like the look of the film, so i was thinking about using it, but i was curious about bleach bypass.

 

is it possible to underexpose colour reversal and then push it a bit and then do a bleach bypass? is that even wise to do? the effect i'm going for is saturated colours, grain(but not noise-hence not being done digitally) and high contrast.

[Josh Hill]

I had the same question about color reversal (I'm glad you posted). But I do know that bleach bypass DE-saturates your colors (while color reversal is a saturated stock).

 

I want to do bleach bypass on color reversal to pop the contrast and desaturate the colors (using color reversal to cut down slightly on film costs, telecine for syncing sound and editing and then cross-processing to negative and cutting it).

 

I have a feature I'm going to try to do over the course of the next year or so (or however long I'm in Austin) and I want to do it on film, so looks like I'm shooting weekends on 16 with reversal (I can afford it that way).

 

But I am curious to know about bleach bypassing and color reversal. Someone, someone please answer him!

[John Pytlak RIP]

The bleaching step in a color reversal process occurs after all of the silver halide in the film has been developed to silver. Bleach converts the silver back to silver halide, so it can be removed by the fixer solution, leaving a dye image. Eliminating the bleach or reducing its effectiveness would just leave silver over the entire image and not just the highlights (as in a negative film) or the shadows (as in a print).

 

In other words, "bleach bypass" will not give you the "look" you want.

[Jarin Blaschke]

John-

 

So skipping the bleach only works in ECN-2 and not in E6 or VNF? For my own curiosity - would it work in C-41?

 

What would happen if time in the E6 color developer bath was reduced?

[John Pytlak RIP]

The effect in the C-41 process would be similar to ECN-2. (do NOT process a film with rem-jet through a commercial C-41 lab).

 

Reducing the color developer time in E-6 would likely reduce contrast and color saturation, but would give quite unpredictable results, as the film was designed for the color developer to be "to completion".